Media surveillance and 'the day we fight back'

Today, a broad coalition of technology
companies, human rights organizations, political groups, and others will take to
the Web and to the streets
to protest mass surveillance. The mobilization, known as "The Day We Fight
Back," honors activist and technologist Aaron
Swartz, who passed away just over a year ago. Throughout the day, the
campaign will encourage individuals to contact their representatives, pressure
their employers, and march for an end to government surveillance practices that
sweep up huge amounts of data, often indiscriminately.

Mass surveillance has
implications for all of society, as evidenced by today's coalition. However
pervasive its nature, though, surveillance is often specifically deployed
against journalists.

During the Cold War, U.S.
intelligence agencies engaged in aggressive efforts to target and disrupt
legitimate, lawful newsgathering activities. In their book about Watergate, All the President's Men, former Washington Post reportersBob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein describe how they took extreme measures, at least for a time, after
learning they were likely under surveillance. While Woodward and Bernstein
never uncovered evidence they were surveilled, other mainstream reporters
certainly were, includingNew York Times journalist Tom Wicker and veteran Washington
Post humor columnist Art Buchwald, both of whom were spied upon by the
U.S. National Security Agency.

Independent and alternative
journalists fared far worse. According to former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger's book, The Burglary, the CIA targeted the staffs of more than 500 alternative newspapers. The
FBI set
up fake newspapers to lure left-leaning reporters into submitting content,
and fake photo agencies to gain access to groups; the Bureau even planned to
burn the offices of a national news service, to which it had tasked a dozen
informants, while news staff slept upstairs. And ominously, as cited in Center
for Investigative Reporting correspondent Seth Rosenfeld's book, Subversives, an FBI list of individuals
to be detained "in a time of national emergency" included
specific journalists who, according to the FBI, "are in a position to influence
others against the national interest ... due to their subversive associations and
ideology."

Woodward and Bernstein's
work won them the Pulitzer, of course, and helped spur the U.S. Senate to unanimously
create the Senate Watergate Committee 40 years ago this month; Buchwald also
won a Pulitzer, and Wicker enjoyed a long and successful career. But it is less
clear what happened to countless others who were not only watched, but whose
work was quietly disrupted.

It is also unclear whether
much of the work that Woodward, Bernstein, and Wicker conducted several decades
ago would be possible today. Government surveillance capabilities are rapidly
expanding, and not
just in the West; insufficient
oversight of new technologies has the potential to exacerbateexisting
press freedom issues. Indeed, many technologies and techniques described in an
infamous 1970 White House memorandum
on surveillance, while not specifically aimed at the press, are in wide use
today. From increased
electronic surveillance, the monitoring
of international communications, and the broad use of mail
covers, to the expansion of undercover informants and "surreptitious
entry," and the creation of a centralized intelligence agency with representatives
from the White House, CIA, NSA, and the military, much of the Nixon White
House's wish list has become a reality.

Even as surveillance tools are
increasingly multifarious, journalists continue to find themselves in the
crosshairs of programs ostensibly designed to catch terrorists. Late last year, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA hacked
a protected internal communications network at Al-Jazeera. Last week, NBC News reported
that the British intelligence agency Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) covertly monitored reporters' communications, and that the
agency concocted (but abandoned) a scheme to use journalists for passing information
and disinformation to intelligence targets. Finally, as CPJ points out in an
early chapter of its annual Attacks on
the Press,which launches Wednesday and which is excerpted here,
experts believe that the NSA also broadly targeted journalists for surveillance
during the Bush Administration, and that it continues to do so.

Given the history of how
surveillance is applied to the press, it is clear that mass surveillance is synonymous
with press surveillance. And existing steps
toward surveillance reform have proved to be halting
at best. It should be unsurprising
that groups are calling for a more robust response than to accede to government
assurances of "Trust us."

San Francisco-based CPJ Technology Program Coordinator Geoffrey King works to protect the digital rights of journalists worldwide. A constitutional lawyer by training, King also teaches courses on digital privacy law, as well as the intersection of media and social change, both at UC Berkeley. Follow him on Twitter at @CPJTechnology. His public key fingerprint is 4749 357C E686 71B1 4C60 F149 9338 5A57 27FA 494C.